


One Week In Spring, 2013

by hellogaywatson



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Anxiety, Depression, M/M, Pepperony - Freeform, Polyamory, Science Bros, Still Extremis! Pepper, brief mentions of self-harm and suicide, capital I issues, for science, mentions of Howard Stark - Freeform, mentions of James Rhodes, mentions of other Avengers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-07
Updated: 2016-08-07
Packaged: 2018-08-07 08:02:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 11,705
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7706884
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hellogaywatson/pseuds/hellogaywatson
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony learns about Hulk, and Bruce learns about himself.  There is more overlap between the two than either man anticipated.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Late Monday Morning

**Author's Note:**

> This was my submission for [Science Bros Week 2016](http://sciencebrosweek.tumblr.com/), which went on from July 11-17 with a prompt for each day of the week:  
> Monday - Yesterday  
> Tuesday - Spark  
> Wednesday - Fury  
> Thursday - Momentary  
> Friday - Blue  
> Saturday - Illuminate  
> Sunday - Arrival
> 
> I originally posted the story on [tumblr](http://hellogaywatson.tumblr.com/), updating by day (although certainly not always on time :D). For AO3 I have made a few small edits for correct days of the week and tense.

He’s woken up in craters, with his legs tangled in wire and crushed cinderblocks for a pillow.  He’s woken in caves and on shorelines, in the deepest part of the forest with a trail of trees broken behind him, smashed to tinder, torn up at the root.  He’s woken to blazing sun and pouring rain and the cold, piercing snowfall of a blizzard in the loneliest parts of the world.

This time is different.

He’s entirely cocooned in warmth, and there are no hard edges to dig painfully into his now-tender skin.  He can tell he’s naked from the way he can feel softness under and all around, but that’s no surprise, he’s always naked afterwards.  It’s just that nudity usually adds to the discomfort on every level, but this time it makes the experience better, almost blissful.

He rolls a little and hums with pleasure at how good it feels, his body tangling in the sheets and the gentle weight of the blanket, mattress crinkling softly under his weight, the edge of the pillow obscuring his vision as he opens his eyes and blinks into the sunlight.

“Hey big guy.” There’s a hand in his hair, gently ruffling before drifting down to scritch at the nape of his neck. “Welcome back.”

He pushes himself up a little on his elbows, enough that he can see Tony lounging next to him, his left hand flicking over reactor schematics on his tablet while his right wanders idly down to Bruce’s shoulderblade.

“How long was I out?” Bruce asks, and it comes out as little more than a croak in his dry throat.  

Tony reaches out to the bedside table and comes back with a metal water bottle, which he hands over. “Since yesterday evening. Sometime around seven o’clock.”  

Bruce sits up completely, unscrews the top and takes a long sip.  The insulation has kept the water cool, and there’s a tangy hint of lemon. “And what time is it now?”

Tony checks the tablet. “A little after eleven thirty.”

Fifteen hours.  It’s not the shortest amount of time he’s ever been out, but it’s not bad.  He blinks and shakes his head a few times to clear it, then keeps working on the water until there’s none left.  He’s long since learned that rehydrating is one of the easiest and most effective ways to ease back into normalcy after a transformation, and he feels a rush of gratitude at coming to someplace where water is so easy to access.

Tony has lapsed back into Schematics Mode, fingertips tracing absentmindedly down Bruce’s back as he modifies, zooms out, zooms in, modifies again.  It strikes him that Tony hasn’t changed clothes since he saw him last, that he’s got the same battered MIT-logo t-shirt from when they went into the lab together last night, although for the life of him he can’t remember what happened after the door to the confinement chamber sealed and he willfully made the change.

“Tony,” he says, and his voice is stronger now.  Has Tony been here the whole time, here in Bruce’s bed, waiting for him to wake up? Did he sleep, too, as the night wore on, or did he stay up answering e-mails and price comparing for parts and reworking miniature arc models?  “How did I get here?”

“Pepper and I carried you,” Tony answers as if being carried naked and unconscious to your bed by your partner and your partner’s partner is all routine.  “By which I mean of course Pepper carried you, and I held open doors and pushed buttons.”

So now Pepper has seen him naked. It shouldn’t be a big deal – it seems like a quarter of the fucking global population has seen him in all his unholy glory at this point – but the thought makes his cheeks go a little warm. He scratches his neck and casts his eyes down to the blanket covering him.

“Tony…what _happened_?”

“You really don’t remember?”

He pinches his bottom lip between his fingers and shakes his head.

“No kidding?  I’m surprised.  You…went on quite the tour, last night.  Been cooped up in the tower too long, I guess, and decided to see the sights.”  Tony’s eyes never leave his tablet, fingers still skimming in intricate patterns over the screen.  “You took a run through Times Square, knocked over a few street signs but no major damage. Scared the shit out of the Naked Cowboy. We tracked you over to the theater district – you made a good impression over there, I think, probably all the _Wicked_ fans, y’know.”

Bruce moves his fingers to the bridge of his nose and sighs deeply.

“By the time we finally caught up with you, you were in the reflecting pool at the Met.  Must’ve taken a shine to it because it’s just big enough for you, you’d gone straight through the glass-”

“Tony,” Bruce interrupts, and it comes out a bit muffled because at this point his face is more or less buried in his hand.  “In what possible universe would this be funny?”

Tony stills for a second, then closes the schematics with an inward swipe of his fingers and sets the tablet on the bedside table with a light _thwack_.  He half-turns towards Bruce and meets his eyes.

“We got a blood sample, doc. That’s what happened.”

Bruce stares blankly at him in sleepy stupor as the statement sinks in.

“We – we did?”

“Yup.  You, me, Dr. Cho, we have more than enough.”

“That’s – my god, Tony, that’s amazing!  Why didn’t you just _tell_ me?”  He gives Tony a light punch to the chest, which is still enough to make the other man wince and squeeze the offended area.

It’s coming back to him in bits and pieces now, shaking Helen’s hand just before going into containment, watching her face as she seemed to be trying to decide between excitement and abject terror.

He’s even getting a few flashes from after the change.  Mainly pain. It’s a rare thing for the Other Guy to feel anything close to pain – even a rain of bullets does little more than tickle and agitate, like a large batch of fresh mosquito bites.  Anything tough enough to break that skin, then, couldn’t help but hurt.  Bruce isn’t overly fond of needles on the best of days, and the ultimate hypodermic they’d built for the job out of adamantium and diamond would’ve been nightmarish at any size.

The memory of pain from that body immediately begs the questions – “Did he hurt anyone?  Are you and Helen ok?”  He sits up straighter, scanning Tony’s body for any signs of bruising or bandages.  God, if Helen got hurt, Helen who’s been so generous with her time and talents, who’s finally made him believe some good can come out of SHIELD after all, he’ll never forgive himself.

“We’re fine.  We’re both just fine.”  Tony takes both of Bruce’s hands in his and his eyes get so serious for a moment that it’s a complete surprise when the next thing that comes out of his mouth is, “You deserve _all_ the balloons and lollipops.”  He gives Bruce’s hand an uncharacteristically clumsy pat.  “You were very brave.”

If he weren’t so tired, he might try to pursue whatever it is that Tony just decided to self-censor. Instead he lets fly a barrage of questions about amount, methods, preservation, has any been sent back with Helen to Seoul?  Did Pepper agree the paperwork was air-tight, none of this is going to get sold and end up in the military’s hands?  Were the in-house samples stored properly?

“Yes, yes, _yes,_ ” Tony promises with an exasperated sigh.  “Do you think Dr. Cho would’ve let me fuck anything up?”  She insists on the full title from Tony just as firmly as she insists that Bruce call her simply _Helen._  “Everything’s sealed away and temperature-controlled exactly as you specified, waiting for you to wake up.  And we’ve got _quarts_ of the stuff.”  He squeezes Bruce’s hands almost hard enough to hurt and turns the full intensity of his smile on him.  “We’re gonna figure you out from top to bottom, Bruce.  Hell, we’ve done a blood draw from your massive beefy green arm. Everything after that’ll be a cakewalk.”

Bruce smiles back, a tidal wave of affection for the man next to him blossoming up in his chest. He leans forward to go in for a kiss, and his stomach growls with unnecessary dramatics.

“I kinda figured,” Tony says.  “So there’s a vegetarian combination dinner and an order of today’s naan – ginger I think? – on the way from Maharana’s.  I mean, that’s what I got for you, I have my own stuff coming.”

He wraps his arms around Tony’s neck and rubs the spot at the base that will result in maximum shivers. “How long until it gets here?”

“I put the order through when I saw your eyes open.  So, historically speaking, about forty minutes?”

Bruce pulls Tony down until he can throw the blanket over him, bringing their bodies hard against each other in the perfect, warm world under the covers.  


	2. Tuesday Afternoon

Watching Bruce undress to prepare himself for transformation is a uniquely beautiful thing.

It’s not overtly sexual, at least no more than Bruce’s bare skin ever is in Tony’s eyes.  Bruce undoes buttons and unzips pants with matter-of-fact calmness, as if preparing to rest at the end of a long day.  It’s the unselfconsciousness of it that dazzles Tony, coming from a man who is so shy in almost every other aspect of his life, who seems to be caught up in a perpetual apology for existing.

Bruce shucks off jeans and underwear, folds his clothes into a neat pile and leaves them in the grass near Tony’s feet.  He stands with open posture in the sunlight, neither proud nor ashamed, and Tony wonders not for the first time if Bruce could go full-on nudist in a version of reality where his body in all its forms wasn’t so high-profile.  He looks at Tony with his patent nervous half-smile.  “You sure about this?”

“I’m sure.  It’s a gorgeous day, there’s no one around for miles, and you deserve it.  Go nuts.”

Bruce gives a serious nod, shifts, and grows.  It’s not something a person can ever get used to, watching that happen.  It looks like it would hurt.  Bruce told him once, though, that it feels great, that it’s a lot like the first full-body stretch after waking up from sleeping in a cramped place.  It’s going back that’s hard, he’d admitted with a scratch of his head and the partial squint he wears when he’s talking about something uncomfortable.  My body feels way too small, like there’s too much going on in too tight a space.  But even that doesn’t hurt, I mean, not physically.

Tony watches the giant who has Bruce’s cheekbones sniff the air, then turn back to look down at him as if he’s asking for permission.  He has a brief moment of panic, thinking, _How could I do this?  How could I let myself convince Bruce to do this?_ – because if Hulk decides to run off there’s no way he can keep up and nothing he can do to stop him, at least not anything that wouldn’t be grossly unfair to Bruce.

But he says, “Go ahead,” and then after a beat, “I’m right here,” as if that matters.  And Hulk nods just as gravely as Bruce did not more than two minutes ago before loping off across the open green.  He drags his knuckles through the grass once or twice as he moves.  Maybe he likes the feel of it on his skin, or the fresh smell that bites the air when it’s agitated.  Tony wishes fervently that he knew what it was like inside of Hulk’s head.  He’s always second-guessing.

Hulk’s steady gait opens up into a full run, taking him all the way to the tree line in a matter of seconds.  Tony eyes him nervously, wondering if he’s going to take off through the woods and never be seen again, but Hulk stops, almost skids, and gives a single roar. It’s not the earth-shattering thing Tony remembers from New York, although it’s still plenty loud, making him grateful for their isolation.  If he had to guess, and again he can do nothing _but_ guess, it’s a sound made for the pure pleasure of it, a reminder to this magnificent monster of a man what his own voice sounds like.

It’s been almost a year since Hulk has had this kind of room to move.  It seems unforgivably cruel that it’s been so long.  The confinement chamber is huge by the standards of someone Tony’s size, and it’s given Bruce some much-needed safe space to learn and (literally) grow, but it still seems so much smaller with Hulk inside, and no matter what pretty names they give it it is, at the end of the day, a cage.  

Luckily for both of them, Howard was a relentless buyer of property, snapping up huge tracts of land on both coasts for warehouses, labs, and storage facilities to house the more eyebrow-raising of his creations, the ones he obnoxiously insisted on calling his “bad babies.”  As a toddler Tony had overheard conversations without context and assumed his father had dozens of other children who’d misbehaved locked up underground in upstate New York, and Howard being the paragon of virtue he was hadn’t worked over-hard to dissuade him.

Even Howard never could’ve imagined that one day his bunker would be mostly ignored, and the inheritor of his property would use the surrounding acreage for Hulk track and field.

Hulk flops over onto his back in the grass, arms and legs spread out wide.  It reminds Tony so vividly of the way Bruce launches himself over-dramatically into bed at the end of a stressful day that his heart stutters.

He walks across the open green, shielding his eyes from the sunlight.  If he were flying overhead he might miss Hulk entirely amidst all the grass if it weren’t for the dark hair on his head, chest, and pelvis and the motion as he breathes deep in and out.

After the excitement (read: incredible stress) of the blood draw on Sunday, he figures they’ve both earned the right to lay on the ground and do absolutely fuck-all, but as he gets closer Hulk catches sight of him and sits up like a shot.  He bounds over so quickly that Tony raises his arms across his chest on pure reflex, but Hulk comes to another near-skidding stop inches away from him.

He looks…happy.  And usually when the Hulk is happy it’s downright terrifying, but this is different from the battle frenzy, the narrow-eyed toothy grin that means some serious smashing is about to go down.  It’s like…maybe Tony’s projecting again, but it seems like Hulk is just happy to see him.

Hulk snuffles and sinks with gentle care for the ground down to his knees, redistributing his weight so that the grass underneath is flattened but no indentations are left in the soft earth.  He raises his head to look at Tony and slowly extends a hand, leaning his weight forward into the reach.  Tony’s not sure what to do, feels his brow furrow in confusion.  His own hand reaches out automatically, but he snatches it back at the last minute out of uncertainty.  Hulk lets out an exhalation that may be a giant-scale sigh and taps his shoulders with his other hand with a deliberate eye-roll.  There’s no mistaking the meaning in that.

_Get on, dumbass._

Tony doesn’t stop to think, uses the offered hand as a foothold and climbs up over corded muscle until he’s sitting on Hulk’s shoulders with legs wrapped gently around his neck and hands twisted in his hair.  Hulk gets back on his feet with the same gradual care he used kneeling and takes a few steps away from the tree line before his muscles tense under Tony’s body, and once again the signal is clear – _hold on_ _tight._

Tony tightens his grip, and Hulk starts to run.

He’s incredibly fast for someone so big.  Tony looks to the side and watches the green roll by before closing his eyes and enjoying the rush of the sheer speed, the air whipping into his face and through his hair.  Hulk is warm as summer, and his hair and skin smell like Bruce but also like something fresh and wild and different.

Tony listens to his own heart pound and measures the beats against the driving pulse he can feel against his leg, trying to figure out the ratio, and then there’s another tensing of muscle that makes him snap his eyes wide open and increase his hold tenfold. He worries he’s pulling and squeezing too hard, that he’ll hurt the man underneath him, before he remembers who this is –

Hulk jumps.

He launches himself effortlessly into the air and Tony lets out a shout of surprise and terror and unadulterated joy.  For a few seconds he can see for miles, the rolling hills of the property, the entrance to the storehouse, dark patches of distant woods and boxy houses and ribbons of road.

The sight elicits a bittersweet pang in his chest, and _oh_ , he realizes, _I miss flying, I really, really miss it._

He has no idea how long it is – two minutes?  Twenty? – before Hulk ceases his running leaps and brings them at a walk once more to the tree line that marks the end of the Stark property.  Hulk slides into a sit in the shade, legs out in front and arms behind, and Tony stays clinging to his neck trembling with adrenaline and some other feeling he can’t begin to understand how to name.  He laughs into the wild tangle of hair and presses a scattering of sloppy, darting kisses against the warm green skin of Hulk’s neck.

Hulk emits a rumbling purr of contentment, and Tony, thus encouraged, keeps kissing, more slowly now, still too adrenaline-high to think properly.  He adds a nip of teeth but Hulk’s skin while soft to the touch is tough as adamantium, and no matter how hard he tries he can’t leave a mark.  Hulk’s noises change, though, getting more erratic and less purposeful, and they sound so much like a lower, more rumbling version of Bruce’s little pleasure-noises that Tony, struck with wicked inspiration, slides himself forward to take Hulk’s left earlobe hard between his teeth.

The sound that gets is surprised, a little confused even, but it opens up into a full-on moan as Tony licks and sucks, moving up so he can run his lips, tongue, and teeth over every inch.  It’s not like when he’s small, he can’t fit the whole ear in his mouth, but that just means more territory to gently explore, more sounds to coax out of that mesmerizing voice as he slides his tongue deep inside.  The spark of warmth in the pit of his belly ignites and spreads, bringing on the blood rush in his ears and between his legs.  He opens his eyes and looks down to see that his actions have resulted in the world’s biggest, greenest erection, and he wonders for a panicked moment if he’s bitten off more than he can chew in the most literal sense imaginable.

Then he’s pitched forward, the body beneath him shrinking until he’s left half-straddling Bruce’s shoulders, waving his arms wildly to try and keep from slamming into the ground head-first.  He gets one knee and then the other on solid earth, detangling himself, leaving Bruce trembling on his hands and knees in front of him.

“You,” Bruce wheezes, “you self-destructive son of a _bi-_ ” and he dissolves into laughter.  He laughs so hard that his face nearly touches the ground, his whole body convulsing with it.  Tony extends a hand and touches his shoulder lightly, not sure if he should be laughing too or worried sick, and Bruce flips over onto his back, yanks Tony down, and kisses him.

Kisses him _hard._

The warm arousal already flowing through him flares up white-hot and he growls into Bruce’s mouth, biting his bottom lip and rolling his still-clothed hips firm up against Bruce’s naked ones.  Bruce growls back and rolls them out of the shade and into the sunlight, pinning Tony underneath him and biting his neck so hard that he yells.

He enthusiastically helps Bruce divest him of his clothes, assisting where he can with buttons and zippers until they’re both naked, wrestling together in the grass with the sun warm on their backs, hands all over each other, mouths colliding and burning again and again, and god, the best part of all is Bruce, Bruce…

Bruce is _happy_.  Happier than Tony has ever seen him, his eyes shining bright and unguarded, every inch of him glowing with pure unhindered joy, and if Tony thinks too hard about it, if he looks straight into the light of Bruce’s happiness, he’ll break down crying. So he focuses instead on the craving of his body for Bruce’s touch, for his kiss.  He grounds himself in the pleasure that builds as Bruce takes them both in his hand, rubs them together, holding his weight all on one arm without the slightest sign of exertion.

Tony comes first, muscles seizing, voice reduced to a chorus of _ahs_ against Bruce’s neck.  As soon as he recovers enough he says Bruce’s name, whispers it to him as Bruce moans and keeps working on himself until he spills his own release warm and wet against Tony’s skin.  It keeps feeling good, even after their breath slows and they’ve nestled together with arms wrapped around each other.  It’s not the same explosive pleasure but it’s so good, melting into each other with complete satisfaction, and he thinks maybe he caught a little of Bruce’s joy because the corners of his eyes are damp but for once he’s afterglowing just as hard as Bruce is.

He wants to tell Bruce how it feels and his mouth is open to let the words come out but he sees Bruce’s lashes heavy against his cheek, listens to the rhythm of his breath, and knows he’s fallen fast asleep.

“Seriously?” he whispers, presses a kiss to Bruce’s forehead, and sighs.  “You’re gonna get sunburned, pal.”

He manages to drag Bruce back into the shade, wishing he’d kept one suit, just for heavy lifting, and for the longest time he simply watches him sleep.  That beaming joy is gone, chased out by exhaustion, but he always looks peaceful in his post-Hulk sleep, his face smooth and free of worry lines. Tony puts back on his clothes, a little torn and grass-stained now, and curls up next to Bruce, using his body heat to guard against the chill spring air.

He must doze off himself for a while, because the next thing he knows the sky is turning orange and purple, and the chill is picking up.  He nuzzles his nose against Bruce’s neck, gently shakes his shoulder.  “Hey, big guy,” he says softly as Bruce blinks open his eyes.  “We better get you home.  Sun’s getting real low.”

Neither one of them says a word as they shuffle back towards the small pile of Bruce’s abandoned clothes, now slightly damp with evening dew.


	3. Daylight, In the Cage

The first thing he’s conscious of is a tingling sensation in his hand.

In front of him there is a sheet of metal, uniformly smooth except for one spot where he can plainly see the imprint of his fist.

There’s a high-pitched whistling followed by words with a buzzing quality of sound that makes him think _machine_ rather than _human_.  “Wow. That answers that question. Adamantium’s really no match for you.”

He lowers his fist and unclenches his hand, shaking it to get the circulation going in his fingers, and glowers at this metal, this frustrating, unyielding thing – his fist should’ve done _much_ worse.  And he should not be able to feel this tingling.

What is this place.

“Are you ok?   …buddy?”

He snorts and turns in a circle, looking all around him.

He’s been here before.

Memory is a maddening thing, flickering and darting, impossible to control or pin down, annoyingly indestructible.  His memories are always a mess, because each burst of consciousness is divided by long sleeps, some so long that when he wakes it’s like he has to learn how to exist all over again.

He’s been here _before_.

…and they _hurt him._

An elongated growl of fury rumbles deep in his chest.  He doesn’t _hurt._  Pain does not belong to him, it is what he brings, it is his power, his gift, but the memory of the sensation is as raw and red as if it were still happening.  They broke his skin.  They made him _bleed_.

How did they do it?

How did they _dare?_

Words keep happening, the tinny machine words and he cannot tell one from the other anymore, he doesn’t care, he _hates_ them, wants to smash them to pieces, and with his ears and his eyes he finds a black box, there up in the corner of the cage –

It’s not like the metal, it’s nothing at all to do it.  It breaks so easily, so easily that he does not even feel it break.  There are little pieces everywhere.  The words stop and the only sound is him.

This cage is see-through – he almost laughs to think of it – this cage is clear as glass and glass was _made_ to be broken, it is even weaker than bone. He pulls back his fist and strikes, ready for the impact and the shattering –

And there is _nothing_ , it’s as if nothing happened at all, the glass is whole and not even _scratched_ , and he roars at the answer to that whatever it may be.  A squint of the eyes shows it, strands of glinting metal, a grate of wire in front of the glass.  Foolish to miss that.  No more mistakes.

He swipes at the grate and it does not make his hand twitch and sting like the sheet of metal in the middle of the cage, but _nothing happens_ it makes no _sense_ the wire is so very thin it should be _easy_ and there is someone on the other side of the glass, lips moving soundlessly, eyes wide and terrified as they always are as they _should be_ he raises both fists and strikes out again and again nothing nothing _nothing_ he is screaming and the person on the other side screams too just one word very loud so loud it comes through the wall –

_BRUCE_

And everything just

There is

There is a voice that says _Tony_

He hears it but it does not come through the wall or from the cage.  It does not come out of a box.

It is inside.

There is usually a voice inside, the other’s voice, but this…

It is not the other’s voice, it’s _his_ , his own voice screaming _look look look_ and there are other memories rising up out of the dark, memories fresh like the pain, so fresh they could be happening right now.

It is room to move, it is the world outside of the cage.  It is nothing frightened nothing hurt nothing angry.  It is the smell of grass and the wind in his face and the cool, wet feeling of a mouth on his skin.

It is Tony.  And it is his.

It is Tony’s fingers in his hair and it is Tony now on the other side of the glass with frightened eyes and he is sorry, sorry and so tired that it is hard to be anything at all but he is still sorry.

It is better, probably better for everyone if he disappears.  The other is always thinking that too but at least unlike the other _he_ can actually do it, he can go to sleep where everything is still and his memories are waiting and maybe when he wakes up Tony will be there again.

He lets the sleep come and he is going, going…

Gone.


	4. Thursday, Around 3:30

It still frustrates her like mad to have to go signature-hunting.

She understands it’s never going to go away completely, she really does.  Tony’s always going to be entrenched in the company his father founded, no matter how far underground he builds his laboratories.

Nevertheless.  It takes her back, as she gets in the elevator and scans her fingerprint to get to the subbasement of all subbasements, to times that she has fond regard for but in no way misses – times full of conflicting emotions and misplaced jealousies, times when she got paid to be told by Tony what to do.

Tony is never off limits anymore – that’s one of the best parts about _these_ times, with the employee/boss relationship irreparably destroyed forever.  Sure, there are times he’s more inaccessible than others, and she learned long before quitting as PA not to try and hold Tony’s attention while he’s knee-deep in blueprints or soldering irons unless it’s with answers to questions like, “If you had the choice between escape velocity flight abilities or impenetrable force fields, which do you think is more useful?  Like if you had to choose, c’mon Pepper, just pick one.”

But all of the labs are open to her day and night.  That’s why the scanner is coded to her fingerprint among very few others.  If she feels like an intruder that’s her own problem to work through.

All the same she means for it to be brief, a momentary interruption to whatever those beautiful boys are up to.  Each relationship is unique.  As she and Tony have the bonds of cutting through red tape, doing back-to-back battle against corporate bullshit, Bruce and Tony have the bond of capital-S-Science. She can’t help but feel like she’s one of the uninitiated entering sacred space, no matter how nice they are to her (and they are always very, very nice).

Once she enters the basement lab, she realizes this, today, is going to be the granddaddy of all intrusions.  Or rather that’s one of the many, many thoughts that run screaming across her mind when she opens the door and steps inside and looks.  And looks.

Pepper has never seen the Hulk before.

She’s seen news footage, sure, saw the exact moment, even, when a combination of aerial news cams caught the flurry of green, red, and gold that meant Tony would come home alive, but everybody’s seen _that._ She’s never seen him in the expansive flesh, and it’s remarkable (she thinks a little hysterically) how bright the green is; she’s always thought it was enhanced in photos or maybe a trick of the light with the cameras but it really is that precise Crayola-crayon new-leaf shade.

There are times she’s walked in on the two of them having sex that have felt less awkward.  Several times, in fact.  Bruce and Tony have been honeymooning hard ever since December and they’re constantly at each other, and she honestly might be more jealous if she and Tony hadn’t been honeymooning just as hard in their own way.  Maybe Tony’s taking extra care to make sure she doesn’t feel abandoned in the wake of this whirlwind with Bruce.  More likely they’ve both changed since December, so much more fragile and yet so much stronger, so ready to appreciate everything that’s good and safe and stable.  She will be the first to admit that the thing she enjoys most about the physical side of the changes is that she’s strong enough now to pick Tony up and slam him against the wall.  God, he _loves_ it, started loving it the instant she let him know that it wouldn’t scare her if he did.

It’s almost become a sort of game with the three of them, not frequent enough for any of them to suspect that they’re actually doing it on purpose, but every week or so she’ll come into one of the upstairs R&D areas to find one or both of them on their knees, half undressed, mouths or hands wrapped around each other.  Then there’s always a lot of bumbling apologies and backtracking, and she stumbles back to the elevator with her heart racing because they look _good,_ and maybe not Bruce but Tony at least must _know_ how good they look and know that _she_ knows, and one of these days they should probably all sit down together and have a long talk about it.

This…is not that.  This isn’t fun.  It’s just one big heaping scoop of uncomfortable, even though she knew this was going on, has talked to Tony about how he’s trying to help Bruce learn more about the Hulk, has helped finalize the plans for the chamber, even.  She tries not to look at Hulk’s enormous green dick.  Tries and pointedly fails because he’s naked and it’s just kind of _there_ so she directs her eyes to Tony instead, who is frozen in place and making a face that clearly says, _oops, this scenario probably should have come with a warning label, huh?_

Then because they each have their respective superpowers and administration was hers long before super-strength or regeneration, she manages to explain the document to Tony and ask with an almost genuine cheerfulness for a read-over and a signature.

Tony skims in silence, having gone back to routine in that uncanny way of his.  The Hulk regards her from behind vibranium-enforced glass walls with eyes as bright as his skin.

Pepper raises her right hand and tilts it back and forth a few times before closing it into a fist and pressing the first knuckle to her lips.  She waves at the Hulk like an asshole.

Hulk recognizes her.

It’s not the big goofy grin and corresponding wave like seeing an old college friend on the other side of the airport terminal.  It’s a gentle softening of eyes and a quirk of the corner of his mouth, subtle but unmistakably there.

He runs the fingers of a huge hand through the tangle of his hair, flicking his glance down and then slowly looking back up at her, as if to acknowledge that even he realizes fully how awkward this is.

Tony finishes signing and hands the file back over to her, and he’s saying it all looks like it’s in order and thank you for bringing it down but she isn’t quite listening right up until the end when he goes in for a quick kiss at the corner of her mouth.  He has her full attention then, and she can see his brain working behind his eyes trying to figure out the right thing to say.  She smiles and says no thank _you_ and begs with her own eyes and the tone of her voice for him not to apologize, and miraculously he picks up the signal and doesn’t, tells her instead that they’ll be done by six or so and how about they all do dinner later?  

Back in the elevator, she clutches the brass railing and listens to her own heart pound.  But it’s not out of fear.  She thought she would be scared, and maybe, before December, she would have been.

She’s strangely obsessed worrying whether or not she made a good first impression, if she came across as rude, and she’s not sure if that makes any sense when technically he’s somebody she’s already met, and then she wonders if that’s the right way to be thinking about him at all.

They’ll talk about it later, she knows, over dinner, while Bruce cooks and takes her up on an offer to help chop vegetables and they either chase Tony out of the kitchen or show him the right way to dice a bell pepper depending on what kind of mood everyone’s in.  She can ask questions then.  But it will be Bruce, shy and reticent, back to his normal size (and is that right, is that ok, what even is _normal_?).

Tony has told her in so many words that the Hulk is nonverbal, or at least Tony’s never heard him speak.  She wishes that weren’t the case.  She remembers the depth of green eyes and there’s a part of her that aches to go back, to breech the door of the containment chamber and step inside, to sit at his feet and tell him all the questions she’s wanted to ask Bruce but keeps inside out of the fear that they would wound the smaller man in ways no physical attack ever could.

She has the inexplicable feeling that Hulk could not only handle it, but could somehow answer those questions better with silence than Bruce ever could with words of his own.

Lost in thought, she yanks the far end of the railing straight out of the elevator wall and it slams onto the floor.  Pepper jumps a little, curses, and resists the compulsion to kick the wall. It would not help her, and it would definitely not do the structural integrity of the elevator any favors either.

There was a time not long ago when the world wasn’t made of cardboard, when she would bleed if she got careless with a kitchen knife.  Back then she’d looked on at the Hulk with wonder, with a little bit of fear and more than a little gratitude.

She understands more now.  She knows the feel of white-hot anger that blinds and kills, of a rage so vast it seems endless.

It wasn’t, for her.  It ended, leaving her with a set of abilities that she takes turns loving and hating. She suspects that the same thing will happen to Bruce eventually, that one day after he’s finally done enough hurting he’ll blink his eyes open to find a life waiting for him where he simply learns to handle the body he’s been dealt, to hate what it can do but sometimes love it, too.

Remembering that half smile and awkward hair ruffle, played out on giant features but so eerily similar to the way the same gestures look on his smaller ones, she wonders if maybe that day isn’t so far off.


	5. All Day Friday

The funny thing about depression is you can still have an awful day no matter how in love you are.

Well.  It’s not all that funny.  But he’s gotten over taking it personally when the door is shut.

“What do you do?” he got up the nerve to ask once, after a few days had gone by since the last closed door and Bruce seemed to be in a talkative mood.  It was one part curiosity, one part hoping maybe whatever coping strategies Bruce used would also help for the days when he couldn’t even look up at the stars without feeling the tightening in his chest.

“Not much,” Bruce had answered without looking up from his monitor.  “If I can sleep, I do.  Sometimes most of the day.  You can’t think about anything when you’re asleep.”

It was only when the air leaked out of his lungs in relief that he realized it had also been one part gnawing worry that Bruce was hurting himself when Tony wasn’t watching, that he was taking out his anger on his own skin and trusting that the frequent transformations would cover up any signs of it.  Tony wishes he could bring himself to trust Bruce more, but it was an uphill battle after he moved in just getting him to eat properly.  There are still times when they’re together that the image flashes unwelcome into his head of that gorgeous, full mouth wrapped around the barrel of a gun, and he quakes with his own anger at brain chemistry and the history of human cruelty and yes, even a little bit at Bruce for hating himself so much.

He knows it’s not Bruce’s fault any more than the times he feels like he could die of fear are his. It’s not what either one of them would have chosen.  It’s just that Bruce’s brilliance and sheer lovability seem so fucking _obvious_ and it frustrates him beyond words that Bruce doesn’t see it, not at all.

So Friday morning when he scans in and wanders into Bruce’s apartment to find the living room quiet and empty and the bedroom door firmly closed, he may not take it personally, but his heart still hurts.

He does the same thing he always does and sends Bruce a text.

_Sorry you’re having a rough day.  I love you.  Let me know if you need anything and I’ll be there._

He sends it without reading it over, knowing full well that nothing ever feels good enough.  There is no set of adequate words to capture the worry and the care, and even if there were if might not help Bruce to read them.

For a half-second, he wants to send another message, to say _I held your hand back on Sunday_ or _I saw your eyes change color_ but shit this is _not_ the time to try talking about that.

He tucks his phone in the pocket of his jeans and makes his way back to his own apartment.  If nothing else the sight of Bruce’s closed door has reminded him to take his meds.

“Have you ever considered, you know, drugs?” he’d asked a different time, a late morning over respective coffee and tea.  It had been after two shut-door days in a row, which had never happened before and had been two of his own personal worst days since December.

Bruce breathed in the steam from his cup.  “I assume you’re talking about the practical kind, not the fun kind.  Like SSRI’s?”

Tony nodded, already regretting that he’d said anything, but after all it _had_ been Bruce (with gentle backup from Pepper) who had eased him into therapy and the resulting prescriptions in the first place.

“I’ve thought about it,” Bruce admitted.  “Especially overseas, because when people are depending on you for survival you can’t just shut down.  Back then I usually would push through it and at least get the work done, do the rounds, whatever, but I’d go so fucking numb, and having a human life in your hands but not being able to feel anything, that’s – it wasn’t a great solution for anybody involved.”

Tony drowned his thoughts in a long sip of coffee and waited for Bruce to continue.

“So…yeah, I’ve thought about it.  But it’s not something I can start now while we’re getting this work done and I’m transforming regularly.  I mean, every time I change and go back I’m reverting almost completely to the body I had at the time of the accident so any effects of brain chemistry-altering meds would be negated and I’d have to start all over again.  Well, you probably know already how long it can take for SSRI’s to start working – it would be a losing battle.”

Tony set his cup down and it clattered louder than he had meant.  “Bruce, if these experiments are making it harder for you to-”

“No, no, no, don’t start worrying about that – think of it as prioritization, ok?  Understanding this _other_ health problem is going to do enough good for my mental well-being that it’s worth a few shit days.”

Tony nodded. “Ok.  Ok.  I – that does make sense.  And I – I’m really not trying to mother hen you, here, that’s not what this is about – I just don’t want you to suffer needlessly.”

“It’s not that bad.” Bruce put a hand over his, extra-warm from holding onto the side of his teacup.  “How about – think of it like having the mental flu, if that helps. Sometimes you just need to throw up until you feel better, you know?  Doesn’t necessarily mean I want you there watching me puke all day, though.”

“…but I would.  I’d, I dunno, hold your mental hair back and mentally give you Saltines and flat 7-up.  You don’t have to take me up on that.  But I need you to know that I would, that if you ever want to ask, you can. You know that, right?”

Bruce had squeezed his hand tight, even as he’d calmly sipped at his tea.  “I do.”

It’s several hours before he gets a return message, and he’s deep into R&D by then with the kids on floor eighty-one.  It’s what he usually does on Bruce’s blue days, because they’re always stoked to see him and have different brains with different ideas, and god he needs positive human interaction like oxygen.

 _thanks but not now_ glares out at him from his phone when he checks it.

He never realizes until Bruce is gone and Pepper’s at work how long a day is.  There were so many times in California he’d go down to the workshop and time simply wouldn’t exist.  But that was when he built suits, and he doesn’t do that anymore.

He needs a new hobby.

He gives Rhodey’s phone a try but it goes straight to voice mail.  Things have been crazy in Washington ever since Christmas, and he hasn’t had a conversation with Rhodey that’s lasted longer than ten minutes in way, way too long.

Fuck this day.

He manages to get lost for a while in coding, poking around in desperation at A.I. programs he wrote as a freaking twenty-something, because at least that’s an _amazingly_ effective way to get time to pass.  His heart and brain aren’t really in it, though, which is why when his phone rings he jumps on it like a fisherman waiting for a bite.

It’s Dr. Cho calling from evening on the other side of the world.  “Is Bruce free?  He hasn’t been answering my calls.”

“Bruce is…indisposed. At the moment.  Any messages I can pass on?”

Dr. Cho lets out about thirty seconds of what may as well be her native language for all he understands of it.

“Doctor, please, please, I’m not a geneticist, can you layman it up for me a little?”

He can almost hear her smiling.  “Have Bruce call me back when he’s able.  In the meantime, you can tell him…the samples look a lot like his blood, only bigger.”

Tony barks a short, pained laugh into the phone, because judging from Bruce’s muttering and pursed lips with the work he’s done on the samples over on their end, this is something he already knows.

Cho leaves a few questions for him before they say goodnight/good afternoon and hang up, and in the interest of preserving his dignity he goes to the subbasement lab to try answering the ones that are less along the lines of “how does the DNA structure look on your tests” and more “how many samples are left in your fridge.”

The answer to that one is _three_.  See?  He is a valuable, productive member of society.

The lab feels weird without Bruce in it.  The containment chamber looks more threatening, for some reason, when it’s just Tony down here all by himself.  It brings out a strangely high level of vitriol in him, looking at it sitting empty.  If he could, he would Hulk out right now and smash it to the ground.

Except that, of course, the vibranium wouldn’t let him.  They’d found out how effective it was only a few days ago, when Bruce had tried to break out…

God, he’s really starting to hate that fucking cage.  Sometimes he wishes they’d never built it.

He spends the rest of the daylight hours pretending to code while wondering if he should’ve done more to encourage Bruce to take a day off yesterday, if it had even been worth taking a blood sample for all the good it had done them so far, if maybe Bruce wouldn’t have been better off running green and free into the woods and never coming back.

He’s got pasta boiling and cream sitting out at room temp when Pepper texts and says she’s held up in meetings and won’t get home until eight at least, go ahead and do dinner without her, sorry, love you, ARGH.  He eats fettuccine alfredo at the counter alone, feeling oddly like a latchkey kid. Not in the fun way where you have the house to yourself and can do whatever you want.  In the lonely way.

Seriously, fuck this day and the horse it rode in on.  

Maybe there’s something to this whole “can’t feel feelings while you’re asleep” thing, but it’s way too early for him to be sleepy.  He puts on the comfiest, softest sweats and tee he can find and busts out his number one foolproof stressbuster – climbing into bed and cuing up some of Bruce’s papers on his tablet.

He’s never told anyone he does this, not Rhodey, not Pepper, not even Bruce himself.  It seems embarrassingly security-blanket like. There’s something inherently soothing about the way Bruce writes, the way he breaks the universe apart to its smallest components and makes it accessible, easy to understand.  

Tony reads until Pepper comes in wearing stress like a hat.  They talk it out, rubbing each other’s shoulders and exchanging sleepy kisses, too tired and down respectively to do much else.  She stays for a while, snuggled up against his front, fingers intertwined, until groaning, “Shit, I need to _eat_ ” and giving him one last kiss before disappearing to the kitchen. If he knows Pepper (and god how he does) she’ll make herself something simple, take a long shower, stay up way too late watching Regency period dramas in bed, and fall asleep in a sprawl with her tablet still running.  He’s kind of sorry he’ll miss it, but he doesn’t want to sour her evening with his own shitty mood.

He keeps up the soothing flow of particle physics until his eyes get heavy, and then he forces himself to read for a little longer until he’s well and truly skirting the edge of unconsciousness.  He manages to drift off without any unfortunate forays into having to confront his emotions.

The next thing he’s aware of is Jarvis’ voice, gentle in his ear.  “Sir, Doctor Banner is just outside your door.  He asked that I wake you so as not to startle you.”

“Thanks J,” he murmurs, creaking his eyes open and sitting up a little.  The only light in the room comes from the digital display on the clock which he is _not_ going to look at.  He can just make out Bruce’s silhouette in his doorway.

“Hey,” Bruce says in the smallest voice imaginable, and he wishes so very hard that Bruce would let himself take up space, that he would make some obnoxious noises and cause a disruption for once in his life _without_ turning big and green first.

“Hey you,” he says back, patting the space on the bed next to him.  He helps Bruce under the covers and wraps his arms around his back.  “…you all done puking?”

Bruce gives a sad, small laugh.  “I think so. For now.  I’ll try not to throw up on you.”

“Bruce, you can throw up in my _bed_ and I’ll still love you.”

The laughter that gets is warmer, more real.  “Thanks. I…didn’t want to be alone tonight.”

Tony squeezes as hard as he can.  “You’re not.”


	6. Sunrise on Saturday Morning

He sleeps in fits and starts for the next few hours, never getting deep enough in to dream.  He spends so much of his bad days asleep that the nights are always restless, and sometimes that’s the worst thing in the world, being left all alone with his own mind in the endless-seeming small hours.

This isn’t so bad.  Every time he wakes from a few moments of drifting he finds some new way to wrap around Tony or to snuggle into his embrace, to fit their bodies together.  A few times it’s the motion of Tony doing the same thing to him that wakes him.  Tony’s restless, too.

There is a war going on in Bruce’s head, so loud he thinks Tony can probably hear it even in his sleep. At least no matter what happens, Bruce will win.  Of course that means he’ll also lose.  But it’s all coming to a close, to some kind of grandiose conclusion, and he’ll be damned if he lets that happen in the dark.

“Jarvis,” he whispers into the empty air, not entirely sure what will happen, “can you take the tinting off the windows, please?”

“Certainly, doctor,” the voice from everywhere replies, almost a whisper himself.  Jarvis sounds like family.  This bed, gently lit now by the rising sun, feels like home.

Tony whines when the light hits his eyelids, rolling over to bury his face in the pillow, but Bruce knows he’s faking, that he’s been half-awake for hours. “ _E tu,_ Jarvis?  This is what I get for letting you evolve.  Making fucking _friends_ and fucking _backstabbing_ people.”

“If sir would bother to look, I am sure he would find the sunrise to be objectively beautiful.”

Tony pushes himself up, bleary and ruffled, and blinks.  “’s not bad,” he says.  He’s not looking at the window.  He’s looking at Bruce.

Bruce finds Tony to be objectively beautiful, from the lines on his face to the bedhead to the way his faded Freddie Mercury shirt hugs his shape.  He wonders if Tony is looking at him and thinking about the same things, the way the sunlight glints on his hair, the memory of his skin underneath his clothes.

“I’m sorry I hurt you,” Tony says.

Bruce closes his eyes slowly and opens them again.  “Where is this coming from all of a sudden?”

Tony works his way out of the tangle of covers and scoots closer to Bruce.  “You know,” he says, running a finger along the inside of Bruce’s arm where the vein shows.  “I’m sorry I shoved a needle the size of Vermont into your arm.  I know you asked me to do it but I’m apologizing anyway.”

“…I did ask you.  And you didn’t even do it, Helen did.  I mean, I’m assuming.  I’m certainly _hoping_ Helen did it unless you have a couple years of phlebotomy lessons under your belt that I didn’t know about.”

“No, that’s true.  I’m saying sorry merely as a witness to your torment.  I know that it was probably a good idea in the long run – blood samples, research, yay – but fuck, I don’t know, I wish there would have been a better way to broadcast it to your big green self, I wish you would’ve understood better what was going on-”

“Geez, this has really been eating away at you, huh?”  Bruce gives Tony’s upper arm a reassuring squeeze.  “I’m not mad at you.”

“…part of you is.”

“Yeah, well.  He’s always pissy about one thing or another.”

“…Bruce – how much of this past week do you remember?”

It’s less about what he remembers and more about what he’s letting himself remember.  There are fragments from his time inside the green these past few days that are too much to think about while he’s trying to get important research done.  He answers Tony’s question with another question.

“Why?  Something happen on Sunday that you’re not telling me about?”

It’s meant mostly as a joke, but Tony looks so guilty that he regrets it immediately.

“…I was there with you.”

“Well.  I know, I assumed, it would have been pretty rotten of you to leave Helen all by herself.”

“No, I mean, I was _there with you_.  In containment.  I…I held your hand.”

Bruce sucks in a sharp breath.  “Fucking hell, Tony, you could’ve gotten seriously hurt-”

“Dr. _Cho_ could have gotten seriously hurt, if I hadn’t been in there.  Not that you were hostile from the get-go, you _recognized_ her, Bruce, you knew who she was because you know who she is. You remembered her from when she was around in the winter, y’know, when I had surgery.  But once you figured out what was happening you got hostile pretty damn quick.  There’s no way I would’ve left her alone with you, just pep-talking over the intercom. No.”

Tony stops for a few seconds, giving Bruce the look of someone who knows they’ve dug their hole too deep to crawl out so to hell with it.

“I think I know now how parents feel when they go in to get their kids vaxxed.  I mean, to sit there holding on to someone you love who doesn’t quite get what’s going on, while somebody hurts them, and you know it’s for their own good but you still feel like shit.  I held your hand – well, I held a finger because that was as far as my fingers could reach.  And I talked to you like – just like I usually talk to you.  If you’re hurt, or scared.  I got you to breathe with me, Bruce.”  He gave a short, high laugh.  “I got you to do the breathing like you do when you don’t want to change, except you already had.  And you calmed down.  Like you weren’t happy by any means but you chilled out and we got more blood than we ever imagined would be possible.  You shrank almost the second we got the needle out of you.  …do you remember any of it?”

Bruce inhales deep and takes his brain for a reluctant walk back to last Sunday.

There is a memory there. It’s been there all week if he’s honest with himself, it’s not just now cropping up because Tony’s pulled it to the surface.  It’s been there and he’s been afraid to even squint at it or catch it in his inner peripheral.

He remembers Tony’s voice, kind, straightforward, supremely comforting, and a hand wrapped around his thumb.  There’s a faint ghost of pain there, too, but the memory of Tony is stronger.

What frightens him is that usually his memories from after a transformation are distant, fluttery things that feel as if they belong to someone else and were somehow wrongfully transplanted into his head.  But these…these feel the same as _his_ memories.  Dr. Bruce Banner memories.  They’re clear as a bell and they have a weight to them, an importance, that the traces of the other guy left behind in his mind don’t usually possess.

“There was…another thing,” Tony says, fidgeting with his hands.  Normally Bruce has the monopoly on fidgeting between the two of them, and there’s something viscerally disconcerting about seeing Tony do it. Bruce is scared, point-blank terrified, of the direction this conversation is going, but it’s inescapable, like the cart is already creeping up the initial incline and the safety bar is down.  There’s nothing he can do now but grit his teeth and hold on.

“Wednesday,” Tony continues, and Bruce nods, head in hands – he remembers Wednesday, too.  “In the – in containment.  You had a flashback to the blood draw, I think.  You got – angry.  I mean really, really angry.”

He never noticed when Tony started saying “you” instead of “he.”  He thinks he should’ve noticed.  It should’ve been important.  As it is he has no idea how long it’s even been going on anymore.

“You tried to break out. I don’t think you could’ve, with the vibranium, I wasn’t worried about that, but shit, Bruce, your _face_ , I’ve never seen you look like that, not _ever-_ ”

That brings a pang of guilt deep in his gut.  Natasha Romanoff has seen it, and Thor has, too.  But Tony had been busy then.

“I – I freaked out.  I called your name.  Just…just fucking screamed it.  And.  Your eyes changed color.”

He can hardly hold his head up, hardly stand to look at Tony at all, but he makes himself do it anyway.

“You were there in the cage towering above me and your eyes were brown.  It wasn’t long after that you changed, but it was, I don’t know, one minute, maybe two – you just _looked_ at me.  Your eyes were brown.”

He can feel the shakes starting, the full-body tremble that comes when he feels trapped, when there’s no way out of the room, out of the conversation, out of life.  He wants so badly for Tony to stop talking, for both of them to cling together and go back to sleep and keep living together as if Tony had never said any of this, had never pulled all these ideas out into the light to illuminate them into undeniability.

“Maybe…” Tony says, and Bruce wants all of this to have been a bad dream almost as much as he knows it’s not and that everything is changing forever at a dizzying rate.  “Maybe we’ve been coming at this the wrong way.  We’ve been focusing so hard on trying to understand it as some kind of gamma-based phenomenon, some unknown entity, something completely unfamiliar.  But maybe…”

“Tony,” he says, and it’s a plea more than anything else.

“That was you,” Tony responds, and his eyes are wild and sad.  He’s not stupid, fucking _hell_ , he’s the smartest person Bruce has ever known, and he knows full well that he’s breaking Bruce open like an eggshell.  “When I held your hand, and we breathed together.  When you heard your name and snapped out of the rage.  And maybe…maybe every other time, too.”

“Tony,” he says again, and this time it’s a warning, a desperate last-ditch effort.

“He’s you, Bruce,” Tony says.  There is no apology in his voice.  Compassion, but no apology.  “He’s you and you’re him.  There is no other guy, not for either one of you, because even when you try to build that wall, even when you insist to yourself that you’ve got it all neatly compartmentalized, you bleed over.  Those pieces seep into each other.  But it’s all _you_ , Bruce-”

His fist shoots out before he can even think about it and oh god, he’s broken Tony’s headboard and he can’t fucking stop shaking and Tony barely even flinches.

“It’s…it’s presumptuous of me to think I could know you better than you know yourself,” Tony continues, like there isn’t a massive crack running all the way down the wood behind them. “I don’t blame you for being angry. But those moments – those times when the walls come down – those are the times you.  You seem the happiest.”

“I’m.  I’m not.”  He feels a little like he’s never spoken before in his life and is just learning how it feels.  “I’m not angry at you.  I’m angry because.”  He tries breathing, the basic take-in of oxygen – he knows that once it was easy, breathing.  In and out. “I’m angry because I know it’s true.”

He’s known since Tony said it.  He’s known since kissing Tony in the open sunlight, with the memory of another kiss still cool against his neck, and the memory is his and his and his.

He’s always known.


	7. Sunday, In the Cage

“You sure about this?” he asks.

The smile Bruce gives him in return is a poor match for the fear and sadness in his eyes.  “Honestly, at this point, I’m not sure about much of anything.”

There is nothing he wouldn’t do to chase that pain out of Bruce forever.  He would launch himself back into space and chuck it through a wormhole if he could.

…it’s a mark of the effectiveness of his medication that the mere thought doesn’t send him into a cold sweat.  Neat.

Bruce sheds his clothes in the same casual way he has almost every other day this week, leaving them tidily stacked in the usual spot on the lab table.  He turns and gives Tony a look that clearly says they could forget all about this, that Tony could stay right here and it could be like any other time.

It’s a viable choice, and it’s one Tony will be damned if he ever makes again.

He takes Bruce’s hand, and they go into the cage together.

Bruce has spent the last twenty-eight hours moving in and out of panic.  He hasn’t bolted, and for that Tony is more grateful than he has words for.  He was fully prepared for Bruce to disappear back behind his door for hours, maybe days. He was ready to do the best he could with a few scattered text messages, ready to hate himself on one side of the door as Bruce did the same on the other.

But Bruce stayed, allowed himself to curl up in Tony’s arms, both of them leaning back against the headboard that had been permanently marked by Bruce’s anger.  Tony’s not sure if he wants to replace it as soon as money and shipping preferences will allow, or if he wants to keep it forever to remind himself what an asshole he is.

He hates himself more than he has since just after the cave, but he’s not sorry.

They’ve spent the hours together on questions – not phrased as such, but falling out of Bruce with jars and stutters, like a rusty motor starting up on a cold morning.

_I’ve spent years wondering which body is…my “real” body. Y’know?  If I was a man who turned into a monster, or a monster who sometimes looked like a man.  If he – if that version was locked inside my whole life, and the serum and radiation just let it out._

_…I don’t even know how to think about both of them really being me._

_I have no idea._  

This is already so much better.  The door shuts behind them and he is there on the inside, next to Bruce, and he knows in his heart of hearts it’s where he should have been all along.

He’s not afraid of getting hurt, not in the slightest.  All of his fears are for Bruce, for how he’ll walk forward from here.

_God, Tony, there are so many things I’ve been doing to myself not to think about this.  I never realized how much energy it was costing me._

_It’s…a relief, in a way.  Not to have to keep that up anymore._

They stand facing each other in the middle of the room, getting up the courage to make the jump, and Tony thinks that it’s funny in a way, in a terrible, beautiful way, that it was so easy for Bruce to turn into someone else, and now it’s so hard for him to be himself.

“Tony,” he says once, very softly.

“You don’t have to do this,” Tony hears himself saying.  “Not today. Not this soon.  You have all the time you need, Bruce, you can always come back to it, spend today doing whatever you want, spend the whole _year_ that way, you know, you’ve been through enough you can just take a vacation and it’s nothing to feel guilty about-”

“Tony,” Bruce says again, and an actual smile graces his mouth.  “Shut up.”

He holds out his hand.

Tony extends his own arm, understanding perfectly, and lets his fingers rest gently on Bruce’s upturned palm.

Bruce changes.

He gets taller and bulkier and his skin goes deep, dark, green, and Tony can feel the stretch against his hand, the arrival of Bruce’s other body tingling a little like static in the tips of his fingers.

They look at each other without a sound or even a breath.

The eyes that hold his are bright green, and they know him.  They absolutely know him.

_Tony.  Oh god, Tony._

_I’ve-_

_I’ve killed people._

_…so have I, Bruce._

_I didn’t even transform, first._

_I wasn’t confused, wasn’t lost in my head – I knew what I was doing._

_I’m not proud of it._

_If I were put back in those same situations…I’d probably do it again._

_The suits were weapons, as well as armor._

_…I’m no less of a monster than you’ve ever been._

_If anything, I am much, much worse._

There is more Bruce in the cage now than there has ever been before.  Literally.  Physically. Because he’s there, it’s all in his face, and the only thing that’s changed (beyond the hugeness and the greenness) is that he doesn’t look afraid anymore.

Still sad, but not scared.

Bruce turns his palm, lifts it over Tony’s and very, very carefully presses down against the back of his hand with two big fingers.  Tony’s not sure which is more incredible, the force or the restraint, and he laughs, eyes crinkling and going damp in the corners.

“Bruce,” he says.  “Big guy.  I love you so fucking much.”

_…why do you like me?_

_Jesus, Tony.  Why wouldn’t I like you?_

_You save people._

_You’ve saved so many more people than you’ve hurt._

_…you save people too, y’know._

_You saved me._

_You think I forget?_

_You’re the reason I’m alive, Bruce._

_I know, I know.  I’m not supposed to bring it up.  Not make a big thing out of it._

_But shit, Bruce._

_I don’t forget._

Tony sits in Bruce’s lap, which is big enough for three of him.  His leg is so warm Tony can feel it through the denim of his jeans like they’re not even there, like the two of them are sitting skin to skin like this. Maybe someday they will, for real. Maybe they won’t.  It doesn’t seem important.

The important thing is this, here, now, the way Bruce’s ribs expand when he inhales, so quiet for someone so big.  Tony leans against his side, closes his eyes and feels Bruce breathe.

_I’m not going to die on this hill with you, Tony, I – I refuse to get into an argument with you about who’s the bigger monster._

_Well, you are.  You have at least three or four feet on me._

_Tony –_

_I concede defeat._

_…Jesus, Tony._

_Well, come on, just ‘cause you get all big and strong and emerald, you think you get the monopoly on monsterdom?_

_They’re people too, Bruce._

_…monsters are people too._


End file.
